“Indeed,” said Riker. “You learned the truth.”
“You are young to have a ward.”
“I am. But just as I was unable to dodge taking responsibility for my father’s firm, so was I not excused from the obligation of caring for an orphan when tragedy struck her family. Happenstance will sneak up on even the most footloose man, Mr. Bell… when he least expects it. But I will tell you this: the events we don’t plan for are sometimes the best that ever happen to us. The girl brings light into my life where there was darkness.”
“Where is she now?”
“At school. She will graduate in June.” He pointed across the table at Bell. “I hope you can meet her. This summer she will sail with me to New York. As she was reared in a cloistered manner, I make every effort to broaden her horizons. Meeting a private detective would certainly fall into that territory.”
Bell nodded. “I look forward to it. What is her name?”
Riker seemed not to hear the question. Or, if he did, chose not to answer it. Instead, he said, “Equally broadening will be her opportunity to meet a woman who makes moving pictures. Mr. Bell, why do you look surprised? Of course, I know your fiancée makes moving pictures. I already told you, I don’t engage in business blindly. I know that you can afford the best, and I know that she will cast a clear eye on the best I have to offer. Together, you present quite a challenge. I only hope that I am up to it.”
Shafer returned. He had splashed water on his face. It had spotted his tie. But he was smiling. “You are very observant, Mr. Bell. I thought when I removed my uniform I had removed my past. Is that a habit of the insurance man, to notice such discrepancies?”
“When I sell you insurance, I am taking a chance on you,” Bell replied. “So I suppose I am always on the lookout for risk.”
“Is Herr Shafer a good bet?” asked Riker.
“Men of steady habits are always a good bet. Herr Shafer, I apologize if I seemed to pry.”
“I have nothing to hide!”
“Speaking of hiding,” Riker said, “the steward appears to be. How the hell does one get a drink around here?”
Bell nodded. A steward came running and took their orders.
Arnold Bennett announced to his Chinese companions, “Gentlemen, you look sleepy.”
“No, sir. We are very happy.”
“Expect little sleep on a train. Luxuries may abound-tailor’s shop, library, manicurist, even fresh and saltwater baths. But unlike in Europe where the best trains start with the stealthiness of a bad habit, I have never slept a full hour in any American sleeper, what with abrupt stops, sudden starts, hootings, and whizzings round sharp corners.”
Laughing Chicagoans protested that that was the price of speed and worth every penny.
Isaac Bell addressed his German companions-Erhard Riker, who seemed so English, even American, and Herr Shafer, who was as Teutonic as Wagnerian opera. “In the company of not one but two of the Kaiser’s subjects, I must ask about the talk of war in Europe.”
“Germany and England are competitors, not enemies,” Riker answered.
“Our nations are evenly balanced,” Shafer added quickly. “England has more battleships. We have by far the greater Army-the most modern and advanced, the strongest in the world.”
“Only in those parts of the world that your Army can march to,” Arnold Bennett called from the next table.
“What is that, sir?”
“Our American hosts’ Admiral Mahan put it most aptly: ‘The nation that rules the seas, rules the world.’ Your Army is worth spit in a bucket if it can’t get to where the fight is.”
Shafer turned purple. Veins bulged on his forehead.
Riker cautioned him with a gesture, and answered, “There is no fight. The talk of war is just talk.”
“Then why do you keep building more warships?” the English writer shot back.
“Why does England?” Riker retorted mildy.
The Chicagoans and the Chinese seminary students swiveled eyeballs between the Germans and the English like spectators at a tennis match. To Isaac Bell’s surprise, one of the silent Chinese answered before the writer could.
“England is an island. The English see no choice.”
“Thank you, Louis,” Arnold Bennett said. “I could not have put it better myself.”
Louis’s dark almond eyes grew wide, and he looked down as if embarrassed to have spoken up.
“By that logic,” said Riker, “Germany has no choice either. German industry and German trade demand a vast fleet of merchant ships to sail our goods across every sea. We must protect our fleet. But, frankly, it is my instinct that sensible businessmen will never go to war.”
Herr Shafer scoffed, “My countryman is gullible. Businessmen will have no say in it. Britain and Russia conspire to obstruct German growth. France will side with England, too. Thank Gott for the Imperial German Army and our Prussian officers.”
“Prussians?” shouted a Chicagoan. “Prussian officers made my grandfather emigrate to America.”
“Mine, too,” called another, red in the face. “Thank ‘Gott’ they took us out of that hellhole.”
“Socialists,” Shafer commented.
“Socialists? I’ll show you a Socialist.”
The Chicagoan’s friends restrained him.
Shafer took no notice. “We are besieged by England and England’s lackeys.”
Arnold Bennett leaped up, spread his legs in a burly stance, and said, “I don’t at all care for your tone, sir.”
Half the observation car was on their feet by now, gesticulating and shouting. Isaac Bell glanced at Riker who looked back, eyes alight with amusement. “I guess that answers your question, Mr. Bell. Good night, sir, I’m going to bed ahead of the riot.”
Before he could rise from his chair, Shafer shouted, “Besieged from without and undermined within by Socialists and Jews.”
Isaac Bell turned cold eyes on Shafer. The German drew back, mumbling, “Wait. When they finish us off, they’ll go after you.”
Isaac Bell drew a deep breath, reminded himself why he was on the train, and answered in a voice that carried through the car. “After Admiral Mahan demonstrated that sea powers rule the world, he said something to a bigot that I’ve always admired: ‘Jesus Christ was a Jew. That makes them good enough for me.’”
The shouting stopped. A man laughed. Another said, “Say, that’s a good one. ‘Good enough for me,’ ” and the car erupted in laughter.
Shafer clicked his heels. “Good night, gentlemen.”
Riker watched the cavalryman retreat toward the nearest steward and demand schnapps. “For a moment there,” he said quietly, “I thought you were going to floor Herr Shafer.”
Bell looked at the gem merchant. “You don’t miss much, Mr. Riker.”
“I told you. My father taught me every trick in the book. What got you so riled?”
“I will not abide hatred.”
Riker shrugged. “To answer your question-truthfully-Europe wants a war. Monarchists, democrats, merchants, soldiers, and sailors have been at peace too long to know what they’re in for.”
“That is too cynical for my taste,” said Isaac Bell.
Riker smiled blandly. “I’m not a cynic. I’m a realist.”
“What about those sensible businessmen you were talking about?’
“Some will see the profit in war. The rest will be ignored.”
THE SPY WATCHED Isaac Bell watching his “suspects”:
The detective cannot know whether I am here in this very car.
Or already asleep in my bed.
Or even on the train at all.
Nor can he know who on this train belongs to me.
Get some sleep, Mr. Bell. You’re going to need it. Bad news in the morning.
36
YOUR SHAD ROE AND SCRAMBLED EGGS, MR. BELL,” announced the diner steward with a broad smile that faded as he saw the expression on Bell’s face change from pleasurable anticipation to rag
e. Two hours from its destination, the 20th Century Limited had picked up Chicago morning newspapers left by an eastbound express. A crisp edition folded at each place setting greeted the passengers at breakfast.
EXPLOSION IN U.S. NAVY TORPEDO
STATION AT NEWPORT
TWO OFFICERS BLOWN TO ATOMS
NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, MAY 15TH.-An explosion that caused death and destruction occurred in the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport. It killed two naval officers and wrecked a production line.
Isaac Bell was stunned. Had he gone in the wrong direction?
“Good morning, Bell! You haven’t touched your roe. Has it turned?”
“Morning, Riker. No, it smells fine. Bad news in the paper.”
Riker opened his as he sat. “Good Lord. What caused it?”
“It doesn’t say. Excuse me.” Bell went back to his stateroom.
If not an accident but sabotage, then the spy’s reach was as broad as it was vicious. In the course of a single day his ring had executed a traitor in Washington, murdered a detective hot on his trail in New York, and blown up a heavily guarded naval station on the Rhode Island coast.
ISAAC BELL SET UP temporary headquarters in the back of the LaSalle Station luggage room within minutes of the 20th Century steaming into Chicago. Van Dorn detectives from the Palmer House head office had already blanketed the railroad station. They followed his suspects as they scattered.
Larry Rosania promptly vanished. A veteran Chicago detective was reporting embarrassedly when another rushed in. “Isaac! The Old Man says to telephone long-distance from the stationmaster’s private office. And make sure you’re alone.”
Bell did so.
Van Dorn asked, “Are you alone?”
“Yes, sir. Was either of the officers killed Ron Wheeler?”
“No.”
Bell breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Wheeler snuck off to spend the night with a woman. If he hadn’t, he’d be dead, too. It was his people who were killed.”
“Thank the Lord he wasn’t. Captain Falconer says he’s irreplaceable.”
“Well, here is something else irreplaceable,” Van Dorn growled. Six hundred miles of copper telephone wire between Chicago and Washington did not diminish the sound of his anger. “This is not in the newspapers, and it won’t ever be-are you still alone there, Isaac?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen to me. The Navy has suffered a terrible loss. The explosion started a fire. The fire destroyed their entire arsenal of experimental electric torpedoes that had been imported from England. Wheeler’s people had apparently improved their range and accuracy vastly. More important-much more important-Wheeler’s people figured out a way to arm the warheads with dynamite. The Navy Secretary told me this morning. He is distraught. So much so, he is threatening to offer the President his resignation. Apparently the use of TNT would have given U.S. torpedoes ten times more power underwater.”
“Can we assume it was not an accident?”
“We have to,” Van Dorn answered flatly. “And even though the Navy is nominally in charge of guarding their own facility, they are extremely disappointed with Van Dorn Protection Services.”
Isaac Bell said nothing.
“I don’t have to explain the consequences of being a government entity’s target of blame, deserved or not,” Van Dorn continued. “And I am not entirely sure what you were doing in Chicago when the spy attacked in Newport.”
This did require an answer, and Bell said, “The Great White Fleet is about to make landfall at San Francisco. Scully was tracking the spy, or his agents, to San Francisco. Thanks to Scully, I very likely have him in my sights.”
“What do you suppose he intends to do?”
“I don’t know yet. But it must involve the fleet, and I am going to stop him before he does it.”
Van Dorn remained silent for a long minute. Bell said nothing. Finally the boss said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Isaac.”
“He will not pack his bags and go home after Newport. He will attack the fleet.”
Van Dorn said, “All right. I’ll alert Bronson in San Francisco.”
“I already have.”
He went back to the luggage room. Van Dorns reported that Herr Shafer and the Chinese traveling with Arnold Bennett had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, as their tickets had indicated. “Their train’s leaving, Isaac. If you’re going with ’em, you gotta go.”
“I’m going.”
TWO STRONG HORSES PULLED an ice wagon modified with carriage springs and pneumatic tires instead of hard rubber, which made its ride unusually smooth on the rough cobbled streets that slanted down to Newport’s waterfront. No one took note in the dim light of the thinly scattered gas lamps that the driver clutching the brake handle cut too slight and boyish a figure to heave hundred-pound blocks of ice onto a fishing dock. And if anyone thought it odd that the driver was singing to her horses,
“You can’t remember
what I can’t forget,”
in a soft soprano, they kept their opinions to themselves. The seamen of Newport had been smuggling rum, tobacco, slaves, and opium for three hundred years. If a girl wanted to entertain her horses while delivering ice to a boat in the dark, that was her business.
The boat was a rugged, broad-beamed, thirty-foot catboat with a stubby mast ahead of a low coach roof. With its gaff-rigged sail that was nearly square, and a centerboard instead of a fixed keel, it was faster than it looked and equally at home in shallow bays and off the coast. A gang of men in slickers and wool watch caps climbed out of the cabin.
While the girl stood watch with her hands buried in her pockets, the men drew the canvas off the ice wagon’s cargo, inclined a ramp of planks between the wagon and dock, and gently slid four seventeen-foot-long, cigar-shaped metal tubes down the ramp one by one. They shifted the ramp and slid all four into the boat, and lashed them securely to a cushioned bed of canvas sails.
When they were done, the wide wooden hull squatted low in the water. All but one of the men climbed into the wagon and drove away. The man who stayed raised the sail and untied the mooring lines.
The girl took the tiller and sailed the boat skillfully off the dock and into the night.
THAT SAME NIGHT-the westbound Overland Limited’s first night out of Chicago-reports waiting for Bell at Rock Island, Illinois, confirmed that the gem merchant Riker had indeed boarded the California Limited to San Diego. Still disliking coincidences, Bell wired Horace Bronson, head of the San Francisco office, asking him to assign James Dashwood, a young operative who had proven himself on the Wrecker case, to intercept the California Limited at Los Angeles. Dashwood should see whether Riker actually continued on to San Diego to purchase pink tourmaline gems or changed trains to San Francisco. Regardless, the young detective would trail Riker and observe his subsequent actions. Bell warned Bronson that Riker was traveling with a bodyguard named Plimpton, who would be watching his back.
Then he wired Research back in New York, asking for more information on the death of Riker’s father in South Africa and urging Grady Forrer to step up the hunt for information about his ward.
Laurence Rosania’s disappearance upon arrival had set off a frantic manhunt. But when Bell reached Des Moines, Iowa, the information was waiting that the retired thief-after giving his Van Dorn shadows the slip out of habit or professional pride-had been written up in the Chicago Tribune marriage announcements and was scheduled to steam toward a San Francisco honeymoon in his bride’s private car. So much for admonishing youth that crime did not pay, noted the Chicago Van Dorn headquarters.
Herr Shafer, Arnold Bennett, and Bennett’s Chinese companions had transferred to the Overland Limited to San Francisco, and it was with them that Bell continued on the journey west, hoping to pick up additional information from Research at the station stops along with what he could detect in their presence.
Then New York wired that Shafer was definitely a German sp
y.
“Herr Shafer” was an active cavalry officer, still serving as a major in the German Army. His real name was Cornelius Von Nyren. And Von Nyren was expert in land tactics and the use of quickly laid narrow-gauge railroads to supply an army’s front lines. Whatever he was spying on in America had nothing to do with Hull 44.
“Formidable on land,” Archie wrote. “But wouldn’t know a dreadnought from a birch-bark canoe.”
37
CHINESE TO THE BACK OF THE LINE!”
It was the second morning out of Chicago, the Overland Limited drawing near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and something was wrong with the dining car. The corridor in the Pullman behind it backed up with hungry people in line for a breakfast already an hour late.
“You heard me! Chinks, Mongolians, and Asiatics to the back!”
“Stay where you are,” Isaac Bell said to the divinity students.
Arnold Bennett was whirling to their defense. Bell stopped him. “I’ll deal with this.” At last a chance to get to know Arnold Bennett’s charges, Harold and Louis. He turned around and faced the bigot who had shouted. The cold anger in Bell’s blue eyes, and the unmistakable impression that it was barely contained, caused the man to back away.
“Don’t mind him,” the tall detective told the divinity students. “People get testy when they’re hungry. What’s your name, young fellow,” he asked, thrusting his hand out. “I’m Isaac Bell.”
“Harold, Misser Bell. Thank you.”
“Harold what?”
“Harold Wing.”
“And you?”
“Louis Loh.”
“L-e-w Lewis or L-o-u Louis?”
“L-o-u.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Little wonder that unpleasant chap is hungry,” growled Arnold Bennett, who was standing first in line. “The breakfasting accommodation of this particular unit of the Overland Limited was not designed on the same scale as its bedroom accommodation.”
The Spy Page 25